ABSTRACT
The historic dualism Descartes first uncovers is transformed in Roth into two versions of letting go: one which finds solace in the moral and intellectual sphere of the brain, letting go of the Dionysian body, and the other in the guiltless hedonism of the corpus, letting go of the Apollonian mind. But, as David Hirsch writes, "both the 'Apollonian' and the 'Dionysian' present a troubled reality in the context of the Holocaust" ( 12). Both are suspect. For, as Hirsch continues, "We know that Hitler exploited Dionysian tendencies in the German Yolk" ( 12). To exist as only a body is to allow all excess. "At the same time," Hirsch argues, "Reason was put to use in organizing a brilliant bureaucratic structure designed to exterminate human beings. The death camp itself is the ultimate example of Rationalism gone mad" ( 12). Man, in Roth, must choose whether to isolate one side of his self and conform to one version of letting go-to relapse into a Nazi-like emptiness -or allow the two sides to exist simultaneously within, to allow the traumas and the pain of their confrontation to continue unabated in order to hold fast to an integrated self, to exist -without letting go-as a divided being, never at rest.
